BOOKS

THE NECESSARY EVIL

By Charles Rann Kennedy Harper and Brothers. 110 pp. Price $1.00; by mail of The Survey $1.08.

THE BLINDNESS OF VIRTUE

By Cosmo Hamilton. George H. Doran Co. 127 pp. Price $1.00; by mail of The Survey $1.07.

Charles Rann Kennedy has again in The Necessary Evil given us a strong though unpleasant play. It is an appeal to the young girl growing into womanhood to consider what the desecration of that womanhood means, and a demand that she refuse to allow herself to be sold either into the prostitution of the street or that of a moneyed, loveless marriage.

John Heron, a composer, living in his music, his daughter and in the memory of his wife, is a man apart from the problems of the day. His daughter, just entering womanhood, has been for years an invalid, living in her father’s music and her books.

We meet them on her birthday. They are waiting for her brother’s return from the outside world in celebration of the day. The girl, filled with wonder at the beauty of life, with thankfulness for her recovered health, stands looking out of the window while her father plays Brahms’ Intermezzo Op. 118, No. 6. A woman passing in the street attracted by the music looks up and their eyes meet. In the woman’s eyes is the misery of all the fallen women since the creation, and it seems to the girl to carry a direct appeal for help. The music stops, and to her questioning the father tells her of her mother’s life of sacrifice for these erring sisters and of her death from a broken heart. It is the girl’s first knowledge of evil. Just here her brother comes.

In her joy over his return the woman is forgotten, but while they are at the birthday supper the woman comes in with her message of the misery of the lives of her lost sisters; her plea for a union between man and woman that is mental and spiritual, beyond the physical, and her demand for the love and pity of the girl’s innocence for her companions.

Were this scene handled by any less masterly hand than Mr. Kennedy’s it would be impossible; but in his messenger we find again that same note of mysticism that has characterized his other plays. We cannot, however, but sympathize with the girl’s brother in his indignation that his sister should have the veil so ruthlessly torn from her eyes. Surely we can teach our girls the sanctity and beauty of marriage without taking away their joy in living.

Approach the problem, however, from whatever road we will, it always comes back to the one fundamental question—What right have parents to let their children grow to manhood or womanhood without the knowledge that is their right?

During the past few seasons we have had many plays on sex problems. Some of them have been strong, virile, excellently written, from both an acting and a literary point of view, but they have failed to waken in their hearers any sense of personal responsibility towards the problem presented. This is due mainly to the fact that they have dealt with unusual situations or a too sordid group. The average listener feels sorry for the victim with the same impersonal feeling that is aroused by the reading of similar horrors in the daily press.

But this is not so in Cosmo Hamilton’s strong play—The Blindness of Virtue. The scene is laid in the vicarage of a small rural parish outside of London—but it might as truly be outside of New York. The Reverend Harry Pemberton and his wife, lovable examples of the broad human element of the church, in their zeal to do their duty by God’s unfortunate children are leaving to a very lonely life their one child, a girl just reaching womanhood, anxious to try her wings, to be doing, to be helping, but sheltered by her parents from any conflict with the world and its problems.

Into this household comes young Archie Graham, sent down by his father, the minister of education, to read with the vicar. Archie is given a thoroughly bad character by this father, who has been too busy legislating for the education of the masses to have had time to help in the development of his motherless son.

By the second act a charming love interest has developed between the boy who, under the warmth of the vicar’s trust and companionship, has grown every inch a man, and the girl—unconscious on her part, realized on his as something to be worthy of.

In this act, Mary Ann Lemmins, a village girl, who was lost eight months previous, comes to see the vicar.

The Vicar: “Why didn’t he marry you, Mary Ann?”

Mary Ann: “’E ’a got a wife. I was to blame fer this, ’e said. Me knowing nothing—’e explained it all right to me—Me knowing nothing, and what it all meant—brought it about. If I’d a bin told when I was old enough to understand I should a sent him away ’e says, double quick, and saved ’im and me and the little one. ’E says as how if we was taught to think, and knew as much as the man, there’d be very little of this ’ere trouble fer us. It’s the mother first, ’e says, and then us, who is ter blame.”

With his eyes opened to what a parent’s responsibilities should be, the vicar calls his wife and begs that she give Effie the knowledge which would protect her. The mother brings every old-time argument behind which false modesty has hidden for years to prove that Effie should not be told. “Girls must learn for themselves. My mother never told me.” Only when he insists that if she does not tell Effie he will, does she agree to do so that night. She delays, however, and a few mornings later the father finds Effie in Archie’s bedroom, quite innocently come to hear of his trip to London the previous day. The vicar, refusing to believe that his daughter, knowing what he thinks her mother has told her, could have come to the room voluntarily, accuses the boy of having enticed her there. A violent quarrel between the two men ends the act. But in the last act the vicar learns that the young people have acted innocently, and it all ends happily.

The play is beautifully written, the characters so human, so lovable, that one feels grateful to Mr. Hamilton for having introduced us to them. It is by far the strongest and most convincing appeal for sex education that has yet been written for the stage. One cannot imagine any parent who has been blind to his duty, as had been the vicar, not crying with him, “My child might have been Mary Ann.”

The Blindness of Virtue should do much good. It might be considered the cause to effect as shown in Brieux’ Damaged Goods.

Olive Crosby.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR VOCATIONAL TRAINING IN BOSTON

The Women’s Municipal League of Boston. 300 pp.

Some excitement has been aroused in the ranks of those who are interested in vocational guidance to youths by the conclusion of several students of the subject that young people between fourteen and sixteen need to be guided into further training rather than into gainful occupations. If this conclusion be correct a distinct service will be rendered by listing and analyzing existing opportunities for vocational training. Without committing itself to either point of view, the Women’s Municipal League of Boston has pioneered by compiling a handbook of such opportunities in that city.

For the purposes of this book vocational training is defined as “any education the controlling purpose of which is to fit for profitable employment.” It is obvious that in any attempt to analyze and discriminate among agencies offering vocational education, the value of the work will be determined largely by the manner in which it is conducted. The investigations for this treatise were done mainly by students from Harvard, Radcliffe and Wellesley Colleges, from the School for Social Workers, and from Boston University. Their work, says the preface, was closely supervised. A tentative chart made from the written reports of the students was subjected to the comparative scrutiny of the heads of all the schools concerned. Before the final charts were made conferences were held with experts in each type of education listed.

Besides an alphabetical list of 292 subjects taught in vocational schools and classes in Boston, the book contains classified information regarding professional schools, commercial schools, industrial schools and schools for training in the household arts. Both public and private schools are included. Among industrial schools are included pre-vocational, manual training, trade, technical and other improvement schools. With regard to each school the book tells briefly its purpose, courses, admission requirements, tuition, season, and what the school undertakes in the way of placing its students.

A supplement lists organized opportunities for training for the physically handicapped in Massachusetts, opportunities for vocational training in settlements and other social centers and organized opportunities for finding employment.

Winthrop D. Lane.

SOCIALISM SUMMED UP

By Morris Hillquit. The H. K. Fly Co. 110 pp. Price $1.00; by mail of The Survey $1.06.

THE TRUTH ABOUT SOCIALISM

By Allan L. Benson. B. W. Huebsch. 188 pp. Price $1.00; by mail of The Survey $1.10.

SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE

By Samuel P. Orth. Henry Holt. 352 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of The Survey $1.62.

MY LIFE

By August Bebel. The University of Chicago Press. 343 pp. Price $2.00; by mail of The Survey $2.14.

FURTHER REMINISCENCES

By H. M. Hyndman. The Macmillan Co. 545 pp. Price $5.00; by mail of The Survey $5.20.

THE LARGER ASPECTS OF SOCIALISM

By William English Walling. The Macmillan Co. 406 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of The Survey $1.63.

The chapters of Mr. Hillquit’s summary of the principles of Socialism and the industrial conditions, which, in his opinion, make its coming inevitable, appeared in the Metropolitan Magazine. As its name indicates, this little book of 110 pages makes no original contributions to the subject; in it one of the best known of American Socialists presents in a style which, though dry, is easy to understand, the forces that have made Socialists; their aims; the program of practical reform through legislation favored by the party; something of the accomplishments of international Socialism; and a short resume of its history in America. Socialism, as presented by Mr. Hillquit, is a purely political movement. The best presentation of its immediate aims and its methods of accomplishing them is given in the chapter entitled Political Program.

Mr. Benson’s book, The Truth About Socialism, covers the same ground as Mr. Hillquit’s and was written originally for Pearson’s Magazine. It is more picturesque and readable in style, as Mr. Benson is magazine writer even before Socialist, and deals with the subject less methodically.

An introductory chapter covers the general principles of Socialism and succeeding chapters deal with the objections to Socialism. Further chapters take up its bearing on the vital questions of the day and contrast the radical and the Socialist plans of meeting these problems. As for the practical method of attaining the industrial commonwealth, Mr. Benson appears to favor compensation for industries taken over by the government and the payment to employes in these industries of wages commensurate with their services.

Neither Mr. Hillquit’s nor Mr. Benson’s book are intended to cover the subject thoroughly or to do more than is the legitimate function of magazine articles—to arouse the reader’s interest so that he will himself attempt to learn more.

Mr. Orth in Socialism and Democracy in Europe, has presented a good review of the accomplishments of international Socialism under the dominance of an opportunist parliamentarian policy. He has well presented the relations, conscious and unconscious, of the practical evolutionary Socialism of today with the radical or liberal movements of the various European countries. The mass of facts which he has gathered together into small compass bear careful study. They cover the development of radicalism, political Socialism and syndicalism in France; of the co-operative and political sides of the Belgian Socialist movement as well as their frequent use of the direct action of the general strike to gain political rights; the development of the German Socialist movement in the political field and the German trade union movement; and the history of the Independent Labor Party and of the liberalism of Lloyd-George in England.

Such a book as Mr. Orth’s tends to confirm the more inflexible theorists of the class struggle in their contention that Socialism should, if it is to retain its separate existence as a revolutionary movement, be able to suggest the rough outlines of an industrial commonwealth of the future which shall be convincingly different from the bureaucratic “Socialistic” state toward which Mr. Orth evidently believes the Socialist and radical movements of the various European countries are moving. Constructive Socialism has, up to this time, meant the outlining of the successive steps in a program looking toward the Socialist state. Now that many of the “immediate demands” of Socialist platforms have been taken over by other parties, the next step for Socialists is to show what is the social structure toward which they are working.

In My Life, the first volume of his autobiography, August Bebel, the most prominent figure in the German Socialist movement, covers in Germany practically the same period that the first volume of H. M. Hyndman’s reminiscences, reviewed on this page, covers in England. It stops in 1878 with the beginning of the persecution of Socialists and with reform legislation by the government, dictated by the ideas of the Socialist Lasalle and prompted partly by the fear of Socialism, then at their height.

Autobiography is not history, but it throws an invaluable sidelight on history. Supplemented by the compact review of the history of that period of German Socialism in Professor Orth’s book. Bebel’s life becomes absorbingly interesting. It tells of his own development, of his practical work in the non-Socialist German labor movement and of his conversion to Socialism. Last of all comes his subsequent part in the struggle between the opportunist Socialism of Lasalle and the revolutionary Socialism of Marx, ending in that compromise between the two wings in 1875 which made the modern German movement. Equally interesting is the story of the first acts of Bismarck’s bitter persecution of Socialism, which had much to do with bringing these two wings together and which gave its greatest impetus to the growth of the party’s membership in Germany.

Some of the details of the persecution are worth repeating. In 1878 two attempts were made on the emperor’s life. Neither was by a Socialist but they were used, nevertheless, as an excuse for persecution. The first effort to suppress Socialism by legislation was a failure, but the government found other means of making it undesirable to belong to the party. Under laws of lese majeste and other laws, in the first half of 1878 the prison sentences of Socialists arrested in a certain section of North Germany amounted to 500 or 600 years. Bebel gives the following general account of conditions:

“Thousands and thousands of workers who were known to be Social Democrats were summarily dismissed. The newspapers published in their advertisement columns declarations signed by working-men who engaged themselves for the future not to join any Socialist organization, not to buy or read Social-Democratic papers, not to pay contributions for Social-Democratic purposes. This terrorism on the part of the employers became so violent that our papers advised members to sign anything they were asked to sign, but afterwards to do as they liked, because, in face of such terrorism, they were not bound to keep such pledges. This terrorism even went farther; patriotic houseowners gave notice to their Social-Democratic tenants, and restaurant-keepers who for years had been only too glad to have Social-Democrats for their customers asked them to keep off their premises.”

The pre-Socialist period of Bebel’s life is no less interesting than his part in the movement. His vivid account of the bitter poverty of his childhood—the days when his “highest ambition was to be able to eat his fill of bread and butter”—is almost enough to account for his subsequent development into a revolutionary Socialist. Throughout almost the whole period covered by this volume, indeed, Bebel combined a bitter struggle for the livelihood of his family with a keen and unrelenting fight to establish a state of society which should do away with poverty.

The second volume of the memoirs of that old warhorse of English Socialism, H. M. Hyndman, is as delightfully readable as was the first, published a year ago. It is not, like Bebel’s life, an orderly record of his activities as a Socialist propagandist, for this is but one, though the most important, side of Hyndman’s life. From the time he lost his hereditary fortune because of his espousal of Socialism he has been a hard working but unfortunately not a very successful business man and at the same time an indefatigable Socialist agitator.

In his judgment of people and events he sometimes shows flashes of insight; though he is by no means judicial but always dogmatic, “opinionated,” and not infrequently wrong-headed. In his facts, though he has a marvelous store of knowledge—frequently indeed, inside information—he is often inaccurate.

In no affairs but those of America, however, are his facts fundamentally wrong, and this complete and amusing ignorance of American affairs he shares with a large part of the English press. Of those few American Socialists whom he happens to know personally his characterizations are interesting. Among them is William D. Haywood, who in his opinion is the “most thorough-going and one of the most determined working-class leaders I have ever met, and I have come across a good many.”

An illustration of Hyndman’s tendency to be “opinionated” is his attitude toward the worldwide movement of which Haywood is the American representative. “Syndicalism,” he says, “is scarcely worth criticizing,” and his whole criticism of the philosophy of the new labor movement runs in this vein. Nevertheless, he is appreciative of the personality and influence of the leading exponent of syndicalism in England, Tom Mann, whom he regards “as the boldest, most vehement, and most stirring agitator and organiser” he has ever known.

In the great English strikes of the last two years Hyndman was evidently less impressed than most observers by the solidarity of the workers, and he even appears to criticize the democratic control of those strikes which was their other distinguishing characteristic. Perhaps this is because he himself has always been somewhat autocratic in his leadership of the Social-Democratic federation, and thus tends to regard leaders as unduly important.

Of late years Hyndman’s name has been associated with his struggle, contrary to all Socialist precedent, for a large navy and a citizen army to handle a possible German attack on England. His defense of this stand, based largely on conditions existing at the time of the Franco-Prussian war, is not entirely convincing, especially in view of the aggressive action that the German Social Democracy has taken recently in preventing warlike preparations on the part of Germany. In this connection his appreciation of the leader of the German Social Democracy, who is the subject of the German autobiography just reviewed, is well worth quoting. “I have rarely met,” he says of Bebel, “any one who had done so much to be proud of who was so simple and modest in his private conversation, or who took so little upon himself in his every-day intercourse with his fellows. His influence over his own party was obviously quite unbounded. The voluntary respect paid to Bebel was in fact a tribute paid through him to their own organization and themselves, of whom he was the acknowledged representative.”

For the second time William English Walling has made a notable contribution to the literature of Socialism. In his earlier book, Socialism as It Is, he discussed the various and often contradictory lines of thought and policy which have crept in and divided the Socialist movement as organized in the political and economic fields. His contention there was that the struggle of Socialism today is not against capitalism but against bureaucratic State Socialism. Not the least important thing he attempts in the present volume, The Larger Aspects of Socialism, is to differentiate the philosophies underlying revolutionary Socialism and State Socialism.

This volume, like the earlier books, is not based so much on Mr. Walling’s own interpretation of “all the great modern forces, thought, science, art, religion and humanity’s conquest of the universe,” as on quotations from recognized authorities on these subjects. Mr. Walling shows how all modern thought is tending toward a new philosophy of civilization, without which political and economic Socialism could never be attained. Socialism: a New Civilization is his subject. Throughout all aspects of this subject he identifies the pragmatic philosophy with Socialism. This identification he supports by quotations not only from pragmatic but from the writings of the fathers of Socialism. Briefly stated, this philosophy holds man to be, for human purposes, not for purposes of abstract thought, the centre of the universe. Society in its view is meant for the protection of man, so that each individual shall be enabled not to “serve the state”—this is the State Socialist philosophy—but to be free and to reach his own fullest development. The various aspects of this idea Mr. Walling considers under the headings science, evolution, biology, morality and various aspects of sex. What he regards as the chief reactionary influences of the present civilization he considers in chapters on religion, education and the abuse of history, and he brings out strongly the charge that the class education of the present day is the greatest of impediments to the new civilization, and that the invasion of education—that is, the invasion of the minds of the mass of the people—by the new ideas is necessary before Socialism can prevail.

With the dominance of this new philosophy in all lines of human thought Mr. Walling believes that for the first time human society, bent upon the perfection of the individual, will be guided by other than involuntary forces. It will be determined not by natural forces or by the brute force of class rule, but by the creative intelligence of humanity exercised on environment purposefully for the good of its members. “With socialism,” he quotes Marx as saying, “real history begins.” For its contribution of a new social philosophy he holds Socialism, not as it is generally regarded, constructive of the future on the foundation of the past, but rather creative of a future society which has nothing in common with the past.

Mary Brown Sumner.

A SUNNY LIFE: THE BIOGRAPHY OF SAMUEL JUNE BARROWS

By Isabel C. Barrows. Little, Brown & Co. 323 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of The Survey $1.62.

This is the story of a rarely beautiful and many-sided life. It shows us the little boy becoming a wage-earner at eight to help his widowed mother; joining the church at fifteen and doing volunteer religious work among the sailors on the docks, who mounted the boy on a barrel to talk to them, and loved “the little barrel preacher”; becoming one of New York’s best short-hand reporters; at twenty-one taking the city editor’s place on the Tribune during the regular editor’s vacation; marrying at twenty-two; coming in close touch with great issues at the national capital as private secretary to William H. Seward, secretary of state; earning his way through the Harvard theological school by adventurous trips with General Custer and others as correspondent for the New York Tribune; pastor for four years of the historic First Congregational (Unitarian) Church of Dorchester, Mass.; editor for sixteen years of the Christian Register; congressman for one term, full of manifold service; finally secretary, for ten years, of the New York Prison Association, a leading penologist, securing important improvements in the laws, and doing more than any other one man toward changing American prisons from brutalizing dungeons to great reformatories.

The story of his life is vividly and lovingly told by the gifted wife who was the close associate of his labors for forty-three years. The book includes also extracts from his writings and letters; hymns that he composed, words and music; and a number of memorial tributes. It is enriched with sixteen photographs. This intimate narrative will have deep interest for all who knew and loved Mr. Barrows.

Mr. Barrows fought many good fights, but kept his sweetness and serenity through all. As Rabbi Wise said of him: “He was no man’s foe, but always the foe of wrong.” His legislative successes were won by hard, clean work.

“An acquaintance said to him, ‘Mr. Barrows, if you want to get that [probation] bill made into a law, you will have to put your temperance scruples into your pocket and give the newspaper men a champagne supper.’... That was not the method of this hard-working total abstainer. Instead, he made eleven trips to the capital that winter, interviewed personally every member of the committees having the bill in charge, convinced each one individually of its importance, converted the governor, wrote editorials week after week for the leading papers in New York, and so directed public intelligence and sympathy that the bill was passed without a dissenting vote.” He was wise enough to see that “the forces which develop virtue are more potent in reducing crime than the forces which suppress vice.”

He had a singular catholicity. As national prison commissioner, as representative of the United States at the International Prison Congress and the Interparliamentary Union for Arbitration, as a student of foreign prisons and an attendant at many national and international gatherings, he traveled widely and met all sorts and conditions of men, and he met them all on the same simple human footing, from a king or president down to the street gamins to whom he taught new games of jackstones while waiting for a belated car. He had friends of all nationalities, and carried a brotherly heart toward all races and colors. He knew a dozen languages, and kept on learning fresh ones after he was sixty.

He was many-sided, not only in his accomplishments, but in his devotion to good causes—peace, equal suffrage, temperance, social purity, kindness to animals, and justice for the Indian, the Negro, the persecuted Armenian, the Russian struggling for freedom. Full of talent, he “never had time to make money”; and he was fortunate in having a wife as variously gifted and unconventional as himself—one who could aid him in every way, from making a complete suit of clothes for him when he was a poor theological student, or carpentering a drawer to hold his music, to taking his place at the editorial desk in his absence, and going, after his death, to Paris as the representative of the United States government to explain his plans for the great International Prison Congress of which he was the president-elect. Never a rich man, he always led a rich life; and this record of it will go on helping humanity long after he has passed away from earth.

Alice Stone Blackwell.